These are but some of the many adjectives that aptly describe the feeling one encounters upon visiting the spectacular Trona Pinnacles in the stunning California Mojave Desert. The otherworldly Trona Pinnacles – located about 20 miles east of Ridgecrest in the middle of absolutely nowhere – are truly one of those unique places that must be seen and experienced. Many travelers unknowingly pass by the Trona Pinnacles upon exiting Death Valley National Park, as they are situated off Highway 178 (Trona-Wildrose Road) on a dirt road, just past the town of Trona and the Searles Dry Lake bed.

The Hills Have Eyes

A visit to the alien Trona Pinnacles is a profound journey into one of the most unusual geologic wonders of the California desert. This inspiring landscape consists of more than 500 tufa pinnacles rising from the bed of the Searles Dry Lake basin. These tufa spires, some as high as 140 feet, were formed underwater 10,000 to 100,000 years ago when Searles Lake formed a link in an interconnected chain of Pleistocene lakes, stretching from Mono Lake in the north to Death Valley in the south. The pinnacles vary in size and shape from short and squat to tall and thin, and are composed primarily of calcium carbonate (tufa). Many take on the appearance of goblins, religious statues, people, animals, faces and ghostly formations. Truly the Rorschach Test of the desert.

Forgotten Planet

These spires are porous rock formed as a deposit when springs interact with other bodies of water. They now sit isolated and slowly crumbling away near the south end of the valley, surrounded by many square miles of flat, dried mud and with stark rugged mountain ranges at either side. Truly a stunning landscape like no other. The Trona Pinnacles were designated by the Department of the Interior as a National Natural Landmark in 1968 to protect one of the nation’s best examples of tufa formation. The Trona Pinnacles are a designated California Desert Conservation Area.

Goblins of the Desert

The Pinnacles are recognizable in more than a dozen hit movies. Over thirty film projects a year are shot among the tufa pinnacles, including backdrops for car commercials, sci-fi movies and television series such as Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Disney’s Dinosaur, The Gate II, Lost in Space, and Planet of the Apes. These images were taken during my trip to Death Valley last year with a good photographer friend. I processed the images in a variety of ways to give them the look and feel of the ghostly, otherworldly landscape they rightly deserve. The photographs were taken with my Nikon D800 and processed in Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite and Nik Software’s (now Google) Silver Efex Pro.

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